Autodidact: (n) a self-taught person. Poet: (n) a person who writes poetry.
Autodidactpoet: (n) A blog full of thoughts from a self-taught writer.

Friday, May 1, 2015

On Baltimore: Hearing the stories

I feel like I need to start this with the same
disclaimer I wrote last time: I don't have anything new or important to add to
everything everyone is saying all the time right now. All I have is my hurting heart and a touch of
outrage today, with a lot of sadness, and overwhelm, and confusion, and exhaustion
thrown in for good measure. All I have
are these words, and emotions, and anger I'm not entirely sure how to
contain.

When I was in college, I worked at a Baltimore City
elementary school at an after-school program, and it was there that I first
learned how my heart and my perceptions of the world could be shattered. The school consisted of 97% black students. My most salient memories now, given that this
was 10 years ago, surround the fact that the school had lead in the pipes so
you couldn't use the water fountains, the paint was chipping off of the walls, and
we couldn't go outside on the playground because there were reports of men in
vans taking pictures of children and hanging around the school. If you come to my house, I still have a
picture of the first little guy I tutored on my wall. K was in kindergarten at the time, and he was
the first child I ever met who talked about saving his snack from school,
because he knew he wasn't going to get dinner.
Yorkwood Elementary was the first
place I met 1st graders who talked to me about the rats in their apartments,
and about domestic violence, and about visiting their parent in prison. I was at the school when a 5th grade boy I
knew left to go home, and was struck and killed by a city bus. I was there when his friends came running
back to school, having witnessed the accident.
I was there when his parents came to pick up his younger sister. Working at this school broke my heart as
tragedy after tragedy seemed to unfold.
I keep the picture of K on my wall, because his precious face reminds me
not to numb myself to these stories. By
now, I have heard the stories of many hungry children. By now, I have heard far too many stories of
domestic violence, and unsafe homes, and inequalities that make my entire body
seethe. But I keep that picture of K,
because I want to remember the shock and outrage and sadness 18-year-old me
felt as I watched 6-year-old K shoving his milk and his Teddy Grahams into his
overstuffed backpack, telling me he would eat it for dinner.

Three years ago, I moved back to Baltimore, and I
started working in the city, full time, with low-income families with children
with developmental disabilities. Approximately
70% of my families were black, and nearly all of them lived somewhere in
Baltimore City. It was there that I
heard stories of families coming home to find they had been evicted. One grandmother and her grandson with severe
disabilities came home to find that all of their belongings had been put out on
the street and destroyed, and they had nowhere to go. I had several families who were homeless, who
were repeatedly kicked out of friends' homes and homeless shelters due to their
children's disruptive behaviors. Many
were hungry, and parents asked me for snacks for themselves when their children
earned chips or juice for cleaning up, or doing their homework, or talking
nicely during therapy. I worked with
mothers living in drug rehab facilities, and I scheduled appointments around
parent's methadone appointments. I
worked with a 2-year-old who was born addicted to drugs, and continued to have
severe, constant, self-injurious behaviors.
I wrote letters to landlords who refused to fix broken windows,
informing them of the safety hazard for the impulsive, hyperactive, nonverbal
children who lived there. I talked about
lead poisoning. I worked with failing
schools that were refusing to give children with special needs what they were
required to give them by law. I asked parents
to buy small reinforcers for positive behaviors...matchbox cars from the dollar
store for him keeping his hands to himself, a bag of M&Ms to use for toilet
training...and when they couldn't afford them, I bought them for them in the
hopes that something -- anything -- would work.

I could tell you story, after story, after
heart-breaking story. I could tell you
stories of black mothers terrified that their nonverbal black sons with autism
will be shot -- and that's not just in the city. I could tell you of the numerous black mothers
who have cried in my office the past several months as they fear for their
children's safety -- both the middle-class and the low-income mothers. I could tell you about conversations that
broke my heart as children with developmental disabilities attempt to struggle
with the scary events of our community. I
could tell you a story from today about a black child who is not getting what
he needs from his school's special education team, and I am certain that this has everything to do
with his race and their perceptions of his caregiver. I could tell you of one mother's tears as she
said, "it hurts me to know that no matter where I go, no matter where my
son goes, no matter who sees us, from which angle, we can't hide the fact that
we are black...and that fact alone makes us unsafe and open to judgments and
criticism and hatred. We can never, ever
escape that."

This is the Baltimore that has been in my heart
since I started working at that elementary school 10 years ago. These stories are, in large part, my
experience of Baltimore. Baltimore has
been a place that has entered, and shattered, and re-shattered my heart. And I
let it. Because it's necessary. Because it's important. Because I need K's precious face on my wall to
remind me that this injustice is here, and it is real, and it is in my
backyard. Because I cannot choose to be
willfully ignorant of the fact that children are hungry, and children are living
in homeless shelters, and children are being improperly educated in shitty
schools without the accommodations they need, and children are being exposed to
violence, and children are being poisoned with lead in their homes, and
children are being abused and neglected, because their caregivers are part of a
broken system with no way out, trying to do the best they can, without even a
framework to work from. Baltimore is suffering, and it is resilient, and I feel you can watch its suffering parts being ignored. There is no way up. No way out. It is hundreds of years of oppression, keeping the disparities in place. It has been carefully and perhaps somewhat consciously constructed.

For me,
Baltimore has names, and faces, and stories, and I have been outraged about
Baltimore for years. I no longer work in
the city full-time, but the stories and the faces...they stay with you.

But I'm naive, right? I assume that everyone knows these faces, and
everyone knows these stories. I assume
that everyone cares about these faces and these stories, and I assume that
everyone sees the systematic, institutionalized racism and economic disparity that
lives in Baltimore. And I am wrong. And that makes me angry. It makes me seethe, actually, and cry hot
tears, and lie awake at night muttering and cursing under my breath.

And honestly?
I don't even know a tiny fraction of it.
I know stories -- individual stories.
I see themes, and I see pain, and I know some research, but mostly, I
just know stories, and faces, and names.
I have the privilege of going home at night at leaving it at work. But I know that the beings in my office...they
go home to apartments with no furniture or beds, or they go back to the
homeless shelter, or they go home to houses with cockroaches and no food.

I'm angry that it takes violence to get people to
pay attention. I am angry that the lives
of the people in Baltimore didn't matter until it escalated to violence that someone felt warranted media attention. I am angry that people
can be surprised that this is happening, and that they can pin the blame on something other than systemic racism and devaluing of specific groups and communities of people.
I am angry that people will swoop in now to help, and then when it is no
longer the biggest trending thing, they will be able to
swoop back out without a second thought.
I am angry because I don't see a way through the mess. I don't see how the arc is bending towards
justice. I just don't.

Because, a month from now, or a year from now, or
three years from now, that homeless mother with the 10-year-old, not yet
potty-trained child will still be sitting in my therapy room with pleading
eyes, and I will still have 50-minutes to give her something to take away. She is not a television I can turn off, or a
project I can end...because I know that if it is not my therapy room, they, or
someone very like them, will be in someone else's. Once you have touched the people and faces
behind the statistics, you can't turn away. The stories become part of your bloodstream, and you cannot let them go.

I'm angry because the way my mind works is in
stories. My mind works in people. My mind works on a person-by-person
basis, and that is not what's
needed. What's needed is organizational
change. What's needed is systemic
change. What's needed is community
change, and large-scale work, and activism.

But my brain does not work that way. I understand people, and stories, and
individuals, but get overwhelmed when I think about community-wide organizing,
large-scale efforts, and change. It's as
if Baltimore is flooding...and all I can do is hand out life-vests, one at a
time, and maybe an occasional canoe.
What we need is somebody to build a dam, if only just so that we can see
what's here and begin to take stock of the damages.

I don't know how to end this, because there is no
conclusion. I'm angry. I'm sad.
I am overwhelmed, and I don't know where we go from here. I am wanting my brain to work with me better
to adventure towards solutions. I feel
powerless. I feel I don't have the right
to be this angry. I am overwhelmed by
the pain I am hearing, and I am struggling with how to best hear and sit with
that pain from my position of unearned privilege. I am struggling with how to sit with the
reality that I get to come home to a safe house, and that I don't need to worry
about getting killed, or shot, or pulled over, or rejected, or judged because
of my skin color...while I also struggle
to truly be with people who are sharing with me that the very opposite is their
inescapable daily reality. I feel a
sense of guilt and shame as I realize that I need to let my brain take a rest from this struggle it is in to
figure it all out. I feel so very
conflicted.

So perhaps I'll end (finally!) with this. I introduced this to some parents yesterday,
and I think it is helpful. I am trying
to keep it also in my mind.

Kristin Neff is a researcher on mindfulness and self-compassion. She has conducted numerous studies and
written a great deal on the topic (www.self-compassion.org has some wonderful resources). She suggests an exercise for bringing
compassion to yourself during difficult or stressful times, and she describes
three simple steps for doing so:

(1) Identify the moment as a moment of
suffering. (State something like:
"This moment is a moment of suffering" or "This hurts" or
"ouch").

(2) Acknowledge that suffering is a part of life,
and recognize our common humanity.
(Perhaps saying something like "Other people also feel this
way" or "I know many people struggle with these feelings").

(3) Put your hand over your heart, and bring
kindness to yourself by saying, "may I bring myself the compassion that I
need" or "may I be strong" or "may I learn to accept myself
as I am."

Here is mine:

This moment is a moment of suffering.

There are many people who are also suffering with
feelings of powerlessness in this moment.

May I be strong, and learn to use that strength
for the greatest good.

Will you share your prayer with me? Or at least write one for yourself? It may not be a dam...but perhaps it will be
a life vest and that, at least, is a place to start.

2 comments:

Hello Grief.My Grief has company.May I embrace this company with open arms so that it knows it belongs here and might find a bit of comfort, and may the same embracing arms let go and do the work necessary to find some portion of peace.

About Me

"My continuing passion is to part a curtain,
that invisible shadow that falls between people,
the veil of indifference to each other's presence,
each other's wonder, each other's human plight."
Eudora Welty